Lilu Cafe & Hookah Bar

To all the patrons of Lookah Hookah, smoking Salvia, rolling knock off cigarettes and pounding Mountain Dew, This place is not for you.

From stick pipes to Camel Crushes, there are a lot of ways to smoke, hookahs are one of the more relaxing ways. But unless you get your stoner friend to bust out his resin caked glass piece that he bought from a convenience store, you’re stuck paying too much at a shitty hookah bar.

Up yellow stairs and around off-duty taxi drivers sleeps a city gem. Lilu Cafe and Hookah Lounge, your only alternative to the knock off garbage hookah joints that you are used to.

Could it be? A hookah lounge that doesn’t suck?

Located at 1009 Clinton Avenue South, Lilus is an authentic African style Hookah Bar. The seating is a comfy arrangement of mix matched couches and old tables. The tobacco is good, tea and other drinks are dirt cheap, and the owner leaves you alone. The room is often filled with a mixture of foreign news and music. The music is still reggae, but in this atmosphere it seems to fit.

As far as the Lilu’s clientele and atmosphere, I’ve been told its “united”. By owner and operator Beshah “You can play your own music, anyone can come,”

Though I’ve only seen taxi drivers there, there’s room for plenty more. Not mention its open past two, making it a classy post bar meeting place for all the late night smokers out there. Bring your friends, stay in the city, but please, leave the fitteds at home.

And don’t forget cigarettes. There’s just something about shisha that doesn’t feed the beast.